Sasha's Kitchen: Ratatouille

I had never made ratatouille before, but I figured I would give it a try, even though it is February and I do not have a garden full of fresh homegrown or farmers' market vegetables to make it with.  Plus, I absolutely  love the Disney/Pixar movie. Such a great culinary classic movie!

I searched though quite a few recipes in my search for the perfect ratatouille, and ultimately I based by recipe on this recipe for grilled ratatouille from Bobby Flay of the food network. Of course, it not being the summer, I broiled rather than grilled and it was pretty delicious. I chose to serve the ratatouille over penne, and it was great. I can't wait to make this vegetarian classic this summer with local farmers' market veggies. This makes quite a bit - probably enough to serve six, so we had plenty of leftovers.

Sasha's Ratatouille (based on Bobby Flay's Recipe)
2 yellow zucchini, chopped into 1 inch slices
2 yellow zucchini, chopped into 1 inch slices
1 medium sized eggplant, chopped into 1 inch slices
2 red bell peppers, pared and chopped
2 yellow bell peppers, pared and chopped
1 red onion, chopped into medium sized pieces
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup of Olive Oil plus two tablespoons
4 cloves garlic, diced
salt and pepper to taste
2 T chopped fresh oregano
1/4 cup chopped parsley
three sprigs of fresh thyme
penne or angel hair pasta

Place all of the cut up vegetables (minus the tomatoes) on a baking sheet lined with foil, or a broiling pan. Add about a half cup of Olive Oil and toss to coat the vegetables. Season and cook at about 400 for about 30 minutes, until the vegetable start to brown a bit.  Add the tomatoes (each sliced in half) and the herb and garlic. Serve on top of angel hair pasta or penne.

Sasha's Kitchen: Ratatouille

Sasha's Kitchen: Peach, Mozzarella & Bresaola Salad

As i discussed in my recipe for Peach Cobbler, peaches are my favorite summer fruit.  The peach is very versatile, and of course, my favorite summer salad recipe includes peaches.  This salad is a dinner salad - it includes my favorite cured meat, bresaola, which is a type of cured beef.  I think that the taste of the bresaola is lovely with fresh peaches and baby bocconcini, a type of mozzarella cheese.  The salad is very refreshing and perfect for summer.  You can make it without the meat as an appetizer if you prefer. I love the farmer's market peaches - this is the perfect dish for summer and I've been waiting for months to get nice fresh peaches to make this dish, which is one of my favorites!  This recipe is totally mine, but it feels very Jamie Oliver, doesn't it?

Sasha's Summer Peach Salad (makes two salads)

2 farmers' market peaches, sliced 

8-10 pieces of bresaola

fresh organic salad greens

1/3 cup canola oil (for dressing)

3 tablespoons lemon juice (for dressing)

1 T red wine vinegar (for dressing)

bocconcini mozzarella

Assemble the salad ingredients above and top with the lemon vinaigrette (which is just canola oil, lemon juice and red wine vinegar).  This is a very special way to showcase those fantastic June peaches!

Sasha's Kitchen: Peach, Mozzarella & Bresaola Salad

Sasha's Kitchen: Pasta with Lemon, Arugula and Golden Beets

Recently I was at the organic market and saw that they had fresh, seasonal golden beets.  Until recently, I had only had golden beets in restaurants and had only cooked with regular beets which turn everything they touch bright pink.  I love golden beets - they are easier to work with in the kitchen and have a pleasant sweet taste.  I can't really describe the difference but as a beet fan, I like them better than the typical magenta variety.

I decided to create a pasta dish that was light and refreshing and that would showcase the fresh summer beets.  This pasta dish is basically a salad, but for the pasta.  It can be served cold or warm and showcases the bitterness of the arugula with the sweetness of the beets.  I added goat cheese, but you could certainly use parmesan or pecorino. The lemon is the perfect accompaniment for this dish - it adds a pleasant refreshing quality to the light olive oil based sauce. This is the perfect healthy summer meal.

Sasha's Summer Pasta with Lemon, Arugula & Golden Beets
1 box of spiral pasta (fuselli)
2 golden beets, cooked and peeled
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
3 oz baby arugula
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (a lemon flavored olive oil would be a delightful substitute)
6 oz goat cheese crumble

To prepare this dish, make the pasta al dente. Prepare the beets by boiling them for about a half an hour.  Rinse them in cold water so they are cooler to the touch and peel off the skin with your hands.  Slice the beets and mix them in the pasta dish with the lemon juice, lemon zest and olive oil.  When the pasta has cooled slightly, mix in the goat cheese crumble and the arugula.  This was delicious!

Pasta

Sasha's Kitchen: Pasta with Lemon, Arugula and Golden Beets

Sasha's Kitchen: Summer Peach Cobbler

Peaches are my absolute favorite summer fruit.  In fact, a fresh, sweet, succulent peach is just about one of the best part of summer.  As the peach comes into season in June, I thought it would be time to start cooking with some fresh peaches from the local farmer's market here in Brooklyn.

There's quite a few summer recipes that incorporate peaches, and I plan on sharing my quintessential summer peach salad soon. But there's nothing that says classic summer peach better than a peach cobbler or a peach crisp.  For this recipe, I started with Martha Stewart, but adapted and adjusted to get thing exactly to my liking.  This is the second peach cobbler I've made (the first was last summer) and this one was perfect. Then I baked it in my lovely Mackenzie Childs pie dish (one of my favorite items from our wedding registry).

Peach Cobbler (adapted from this recipe)
8 large ripe peaches, pitted and sliced (Martha calls for 10, but I used pretty large peaches)
1/4 cup cornstarch
3 T dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 T cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg
2/3 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Slice the peaches and combine with the cornstarch, brown sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl.  Pour mixture into an 8 inch circular pie dish that has been sprayed with Pam.

In the basin of your mixer (or a large bowl, using a fork if you do not have a stand mixer) combine the 1/4 cup of granulated sugar with the flour, salt and butter.  Beat for several minutes to cut in the butter, until the mixture looks like a coarse meal.

Whisk together the heavy cream and egg and combine in the mixer until it comes together into a dough with the dry ingredients.  Cut dough into circular shaped portions (about 12 or so) and use to cover the top of the peach mixture.  Top with the remaining two tablespoons of granulated sugar. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown and until the inside bubbles.  Allow to cool a bit before serving warm.

Sasha's Kitchen: Summer Peach Cobbler

Michelle's Kitchen in Toronto - Farmer's Market Salad

It's almost summer and so brings one of my favorite times of the year culinarily; outdoor farmer's market time! I was off a bit early one Thursday and remembered that there is a farmer's market just near my apartment on Thursday evenings behind the North Toronto Community Centre. I grabbed my cloth bag and off I went. I ended up buying farm fresh spinach, assorted bell peppers, halloumi cheese (a feta-like cheese that crumbles) and some amazing olive-cilantro bread from the St. John bakery who had a stall there. When I got home, I knew just what to do with this bounty; it was salad time!

Michelle's Farmer's Market Salad

1 1/2 cup mixed greens (I used my fresh spinach and romaine)
1/2 bell pepper, in strips (I used yellow)
5 walnut halves, in pieces (1 tbsp of pieces)
1 tbsp crumbled halloumi cheese (you could use feta)
1 tbsp cranberries
1 tbsp Renee's Sundried Tomato and Black Olive dressing

Mix everything together and chow down! If you want to make this into a full meal, add some cut up chicken, sauteed tofu or tempeh.

Serves 1

Please excuse my picture, I only remembered to take the picture halfway through eating the salad! I've been eating this salad every few days for the last week and it's divine!

Michelle's Kitchen in Toronto - Farmer's Market Salad

Sasha's Kitchen: Green Pasta & Vegetable Medley

When I was in college at Haverford College, once a month or so, the Haverford dining center has a dinner special called Pastabilities, that just about the entire student body looked forward to.  Pastabilities basically involved stir fry pans where students could pick their own ingrediants to be mixed in with the pasta of their choice, to create their own pasta dish.  This was by far and away the most popular night at the dining center (yes, even more so than chicken tender night).

My concept for dinner tonight reminded me a little of those days.  I decided that I wanted tonight's pasta to be as green as possible (which meant no juicy red tomatoes), so I basically took every vegetable I could find in the kitchen that was green, yellow or white.  I diced them all together and cooked in our saute pan with some olive oil and spices. 

All of the senses are pretty important when it comes to food.  Taste and smell are the obvious ones - you're not going to eat something that tastes or smells unappealing.  However, our sense of sight when it comes to food is underrated.  I wanted to create a visual appeal with this dish by the use of color, having a strong sense of fresh green, created by various vegetables from our local market (I can't wait to make this again when the farmer's market returns in the late spring).  For this reason, I felt the presentation would be better without the use of red tomatoes (though perhaps yellow tomatoes would have been a fine addition, had they been seasonally available).  Also, my husband sometimes finds tomatoes to be a bit harsh on his stomach.

4-5 T of olive oil (I used Napa's Round Pond Estate's Blood Orange Oilve Oil, my favorite olive oil)

 1 onion, diced

2 shallots, diced

1 head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1/2 cup sugar snap peas

About 15-18 smallish artichoke hearts

5 large sprigs of thyme

1/2 an anaheim chile (not spicy, just flavorful and pretty)

2 zucchini

1/2 tsp saffron
salt and pepper to taste
juice of half of a fresh lemon
box of penne

To prepare the dish, saute the onions, shallots and anaheim chile to the olive oil,  and cook on medium high, until soft.  Add the sugar snap peas, broccoli, artichoke hearts and zucchini, and cook for about 10 minutes, until all of the vegetables are cooked to your liking.  Mix in the saffron, thyme, salt and pepper towards the end.  Aftertaking off the heat, mix with the juice of half of a lemon, squeezed fresh, and stir in the penne.  Serve hot.

 The use of the spices here is key.  While a lot of other spices might be overpowering, saffron and thyme give a perfect, unique flavor to this dish, and the lemon provides an excellent pick-me-up freshness.  This dish is obviously a great kosher, vegetarian, or otherwise healthy meal, and I highly recommend it with farm to table ingredients from a local farmer's market sometime other than the dead of winter.  This was a pretty off-the cuff experiemental recipe for me, especially the choice to use saffron, but it was a huge success.  I plan on making this healthy vegetable medley again, very soon!

Coming soon from my kitchen to this site: how to make limoncello, honey-vanilla cupcakes, date spread with goat cheese, berry tarts and carrot-potato souffles.

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Sasha's Kitchen: Green Pasta & Vegetable Medley